


Cold Hands

by palimpsestus



Series: Hidden in His Coat Is His Tin Right Hand [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Gen, Nick considers upgrading, Post Ending, railroad ending, some body dysmorphia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-12 16:37:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5672938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsestus/pseuds/palimpsestus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Two hands, one nearly flesh and one nearly steel, were clasped over his chest. They rose and fell with the mimicry of his breath, the steel glinting in the half light that made it through the sackcloth curtains."</p><p>Since the fall of the Institute, Nick Valentine finds himself staring at his hands, wondering what they feel like to her. All he knows is that he wants to feel whole, he wants to feel real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Johnny Guitar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
>  _Play the guitar, play it again, my Johnny_   
>  _Maybe you're cold but you're so warm inside_   
>  _I was always a fool for my Johnny_   
> 

Two hands, one nearly flesh and one nearly steel, were clasped over his chest. They rose and fell with the mimicry of his breath, the steel glinting in the half light that made it through the sackcloth curtains. His breathing was silent, he didn’t need it, it accompanied no heartbeat to pump blood through his veins, and without speech he had no need of air.

But it comforted him to do it.

He was laid out on the very edge of the mattress, keeping his limbs to himself, his legs crossed at the ankles. His bedmates were not so neat. Nora slept with her spine pressed against his ribs, her legs curled up and one arm pillowing her head. The other was cast over Shaun, whose small frame took up more than half the bed. Shaun slept splayed out like a starfish, anchored by his mother’s hand on his chest. The pair of them slept fairly soundly, behind the high walls of Sanctuary, where guards roamed the spotlight lit perimeter.

And Nora said she always slept better when he was in town.

He shifted his gaze to look at her. From this angle she was a mess of dark curls, an upturned nose, and red lips. Shaun didn’t favour her, his hair had more of a coppery tinge, his nose broader on his face, his brow thicker. He would be a very handsome man when he grew.

If the Gen 3s grew.

There were many secrets in Sanctuary. Shaun was perhaps best kept of all. Most of Sanctuary’s residents didn’t know the truth about Shaun, but then most of Sanctuary didn’t know they were a Railroad hub either.

_You been to the Vault yet?_

_I just wear blue._

Deacon’s latest pass phrase, almost as ridiculous as the old Geiger counter one they’d phased out last year.

As silent as an old bot could be, he eased himself off the mattress and crept from the room, avoiding the floorboards that creaked, not daring to retrieve his coat or hat slung over the dresser for fear of the rustling fabric. The room opposite Nora’s, ostensibly Shaun’s, was empty but for Dogmeat sleeping soundly on the mattress. In the living room he found Codsworth, puttering about in the kitchen, preparing a breakfast of razorgrain mash. Nick gestured for quiet and stepped outside onto the main thoroughfare. In the grey light of the early dawn peeking through the har, he could make out the glow of the lights on the wall, and the Publik Occurences shack pressed up against it, but very little of the world beyond Sanctuary.

The not knowing itched in his steel

 Very few of Sanctuary’s residents were awake, but its newest member was among the few. Ava was sitting among the crops to the side of the old yellow house, the dewy grass soaking the hem of the dress she’d been loaned. Her black hair was a halo of tight curls around her head, making her look every inch the angel. He approached slow and loud. Her experiences out in the Commonwealth had not been the type to foster confidence, but when she looked up at him she flashed him an ivory smile and her brandy eyes crinkled at the edges. “Mr Valentine,” she said in that soft voice.

Nora had killed the Raiders who had captured Ava. With prejudice.

“You’re up early,” he said, tucking his hands in the pockets of his pants and stopping a good few feet away. He may not be as close to a man as he’d like, but he didn’t like to scare her none the less.

She shrugged one shoulder and looked down at her lap. She had been making a wreath of carrot flowers he saw. Her long, nimble fingers returned to her work.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, glancing back the way he’d come. “Codsworth’s making breakfast for Nora and Shaun, I’m sure you could join us. Others will.”

Ava’s thumbnail sliced a hole in the stem of a carrot flower. “Synths don’t need to eat,” she said, quietly. Bitterly.

He didn’t respond. Ava did need to eat, just as he did, though the mechanics of how food powered her was a lot closer to the mechanics of how food powered Nora than him. He didn’t scold her for revealing her synth heritage either. He figured Deacon and Serena would do enough of that between them. Serena was the main handler at Sanctuary, but her brassy laugh and ever present sneer was a poor match for Ava. Instead he watched her assemble her wreath, watched her hands on the green stems. “That’s very pretty,” he said as she added another flower to the assembly.

Ava smiled instinctively, and her cheeks coloured at the compliment. “They’re not that pretty,” she demurred. “Some of the petals are marked.” She fingered the offending flowers and looked up at him sharply, studying his damaged face and his bare scalp.

“Guess I can’t say anything about that,” he said with forced joviality, hoping his levity might smooth the furrows of her brow.

No such luck. The beautiful little synth was watching him with an increasingly wrinkled nose and curled upper lip. She was studying him and she wasn’t finding much to appreciate. Suddenly she looked down, breaking the gaze and tightening her grip on the wreath. “Are they frightened of you?” she whispered.

 He opened his mouth to give the explanation, that people were startled at first but after time they learned to look past his gaping non-wounds, that being so obviously _other_ he was allowed to exist as he was, that every day he looked in the mirror and saw the wrong face, was a day that Nora would put her arms around his waist and whisper sweet nothings. The words died before his processors could verbalise them. Instead he hung his head and toed at a clod of fertile earth. “Sometimes,” he said at last. “If you get hungry, you know where the food is.”

The dawn was creeping up over the wall now, Sanctuary waking with the light. Serena would be sitting by the bar, brewing her chic’ry and nursing her head. Nat and Piper would be sitting in their office, eating their breakfast, preparing the first stacks of the week’s paper. Maybe even Nora and Shaun would be awake, sitting around the counter with Codsworth fussing around them.

Nick walked down to the only open side of Sanctuary, where the land sloped down to the fast flowing river that, combined with the watching turrets, was enough of a barrier to keep the township safe.  He found himself standing on the east side of the river, staring out at the sparse copse of trees on the far bank. Just out of sight, an hour or so down the road, the Red Rocket Trading Post would be awakening too, and beyond that the Commonwealth. The whole world. A Brahmin and her calf were playing in the shallows, the calf prancing between the stems of the windmills, braying as it celebrated the spray its hooves kicked up. He could hear Nat beginning her paper-selling cry, and the sounds of a settlement stirring.

He heard the light step on the grass behind him and anticipated the arm around his waist. He lifted his own over her shoulders so they were standing side by side. In the chill of the morning air she was wearing a thick green sweater with sleeves that were much too long and rolled up several times at the cuffs to be kept above her wrists. She leaned her cheek against his shoulder and didn’t say any of the things he knew she wanted to say. Instead she said, “Shaun asked where you went.”

He tightened his metal fingers on her shoulder, the slender fingertips piercing the chunky knit of her sweater.

“I told him you couldn’t sleep. I told him you were thinking about a case.” She lifted her head to try and catch his gaze and after one of her heartbeats, he looked down at her. “Was I right?” she asked, pursing her lips.

He reached around to push his knuckle against her chin, lifting her face just a little to let the light catch her eyes, soften the line of her jaw and cheekbones. To lean down and kiss her would be nothing at all, a mere flexing of electronics, and his lips would register hers with all the sensitivity of his fingertips, of his shoulders, of every inch of his synthetic skin. No part of him was more sensitive than any other. He was a synth. They didn’t waste any of their time making him. Just the parts they needed to test for the Gen 3s.

Nora lifted her chin from his grip and looked back to the Brahmin. He sighed and let his good hand drop to his side.

“Nick,” she said after a moment. “I love you.” She looked to him again, her smile threatening to show through her stony expression.

“I love you, doll,” he murmured, quick and automatic, a call and an echo, maybe the only thing he still knew for certain.

Her smile cracked through a little more. “If you’re not happy here . . . we could move?” She was stiffening up beneath his arm. “Spectacle Island is defensible. Is it Sanctuary that you hate?”

“No,” he said quickly, and pressed a kiss against her forehead. The taste and temperature and feel of her like a tiny hit of nicotine, that he still remembered after all this time.

“Oh, Nick,” she breathed, leaning more of her weight against him and reaching up to clasp the hand on her shoulder. The metal hand. The hand that could not feel more than the pressure of her fingers. He snatched it away from her and took a step towards the river, itching all over for a cigarette, though the packet was in the pocket of his coat, back in the house, back in the bedroom, back beside the boy who didn’t know what he was.

He could hear her fingers drag through her hair, the exasperated sigh that followed. “What can I do?” she whispered, following him down to the river’s edge with her arms crossed across her chest. When he looked at her she raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he said.

She smirked, but kept her arms crossed. “Maybe just tell me what’s eating you?”

“A case.” A lie. “It’s been in my head since I got back from Diamond City.”

She didn’t believe him. “Do we head out?” she asked, letting her arms unfold, her hands planting themselves on her hips. Even as she asked it, he could see the problems listing themselves behind her eyes.

“No,” he shook his head. “You need to be here,” he pointed out. “With Ava around . . . and Shaun shouldn’t be left alone with her in camp.” It was a low blow, calculated and stealthy. With Shaun’s name he’d made up her mind to stay and she was already nodding. He closed the distance between them and clasped the back of her head with his good hand, bringing her in closer so he could kiss her forehead again. “Just something I gotta do by myself,” he said.

They walked arm in arm back to the house, and he spent the morning refusing the offers of company from Piper, Deacon, Codsworth, Curie and Cait. Even Dogmeat watched him curiously as he picked up some stock of ammo, tucking them into the lining of his overcoat. If it was just him he had no need of a heavy pack, just the essentials. Shaun watched him too, even though Nora was nowhere to be found.

“Will you catch the bad guy?” Shaun asked as he finally set his hat on his head.

“Of course I will,” he said, ruffling the boy’s hair. “You’ll look after your momma for me, won’t you?”

He could see the boy suck in his breath and puff out his chest, and he resisted the urge to smile. “I will,” Shaun said firmly. “Be careful out there, Valentine.” But the adult tone was spoiled when the boy lunged forwards to wrap his arms around Nick’s waist, hugging him tight. “Come back soon, Nick?”

“I can never stay away for long,” he promised, winking at the boy before taking the road to the gate. He didn’t look for Nora, but as he crossed the bridge he saw her in the guard tower, watching him leave. He raised a hand, and she raised hers, and he kept walking until he was well out of sight before he cut east instead of south. He had no intention of returning to Diamond City this trip.


	2. Big Iron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hardly spoke to folks around him didn't have too much to say_   
>  _No one dared to ask his business no one dared to make a slip_   
>  _For the stranger there among them had a big iron on his hip_   
> 

Nick crouched on the fire escape, the metal groaning in the breeze. From this vantage he could watch the Raiders who had holed up the intersection, study their patterns, the rotation of their guards, and convince himself of the blind spots where the turret fire couldn’t reach.

He had no intention of charging in and attacking. The Raider bands in the Commonwealth had been through a culling in the past two years, so now only the meanest and toughest sons of bitches remained. The ones who had no fear of death, who were little better than supermutants, inhumanly ferocious. Nick would prefer to sneak past them under the cover of night, but it didn’t hurt to have a plan B.

He was fairly certain he saw a head peaking over the balustrade of the neighbouring roof, but he didn’t acknowledge it. If Deacon wanted to let him know that he was being tailed, Nick wasn’t going to insult him by thinking it was his own cleverness that had caught the agent.

If he had to guess, Deacon was following him on Nora’s orders. He didn’t think the spy concerned himself with the minutiae of Nick’s relationships. But then, with Deacon, one could never be certain.

He settled himself down to wait. A synthetic body, an early model at least, didn’t _feel_ the cold brought in from the saltwater. It registered the cold, a precise reading of the windchill, and it alerted some of his subroutines. A potential for damage if he stayed in this environment. The old-Nick remembered feeling cold, from the prickle of flesh, to the shuddering of bones, and the nip of the tip of his nose. The old-Nick remembered warming his hands beneath Jenny’s sweater, her shriek and her laugh as she tried to wriggle from his grasp.

Nick clenched his fists. The difference in feedback between his whole and damaged hands was like a gulf separating the left and right side of his body. He stood, even knowing that his profile would jut out on the skyline, that a guard might see him, and he was not quiet as he descended the fire escape. The Raiders saw him long before he breached their walls.

 

***

 

Goodneighbor in the late evening was a sparkling neon sign reflected in an oily puddle. Nick lit a cigarette and stood within its walls, tilting his face up to the stars. From the looks he was getting he still had Raider blood on his face. He reached up and scratched at the dry red flakes and inspected the evidence on his fingertips.

Fahrenheit exited the Old State House and scanned the street briefly until she spotted him, and then marched towards him in a beeline. “Valentine,” she greeted him, nodding. “Hancock says you’re to feel free to make yourself at home, but he hasn’t seen the General.”

Nick shook his head. “Not here for her,” he said.

“Hmm,” Fahrenheit hesitated, most unlike her, and then reached up to her cheek. “You, uh, got a little something.”

He cursed and rubbed again at his face. “Tell Hancock I’ll be round later,” he said. He flicked the ash to cobblestones and tipped his hat to her, enjoying her grimace. He also showed Daisy the same courtesy as he passed, because he knew the old dame appreciated the historical touch. He navigated the winding streets to his final destination and found himself inside the scarlet interior of the Memory Den. Irma was giving the introductory spiel to a prospective client, a gunner by the looks of his gear, so Nick just waved and made his way to the back of the room.

Amari was in her lair, as usual, and sitting at a terminal featuring the readings of the dreams that were pumped out above them. She smiled when she saw him. “Hello Mr Valentine,” she said, clasping her hands around her cup. “What can I do for you? I haven’t seen the General lately.”

He couldn’t help a grimace at the second time Nora’s name had come up in his short time in the settlement. “I’m not always here looking for her,” he said a little tersely, and Amari’s eyebrows shot upwards.

“But I take it this isn’t a social call,” she said and set her coffee cup down. When he hesitated, she gestured for him to take a seat. “You, um, might have freshened up before you got here.”

He resisted the urge to touch his face again. “Sorry,” he said, easing himself down onto the spare chair. He wondered what he was going to say.

Amari wasn’t a woman blessed with great patience. She scowled at him. “I do have other work to do.”

“I know, Doc,” he said softly.

“Is something wrong?” she ventured.

“Doc . . . with the Institute gone . . .” he stopped himself. The Institute didn’t matter, weren’t the ghosts he’d carried with him for years. Weren’t the ghosts he’d laid to rest with Nora. And though he’d stood at the top of the Mass Fusion building and remained solemn while Desdemona and the others celebrated its destruction, he’d done all that for Nora.  “Doc,” he began again. “What you did for Curie. Could you do that for me?”

The long silence that followed his question was broken only by Amari drumming her fingers on the edge of the terminal’s keyboard.

“Doc?” he prompted.

“In theory,” Amari allowed. She leaned closer. “Is this for her?”

It was his own memories, not the old-Nick’s, that flashed in front of him. Mismatched hands on her belly, the whisper of his breath against his ear, and the delight of her laughter, so loud and long she doubled up in wheezing agony. He shook his head. “No, Doc, it’s for me,” he said, firmly. “Every morning I look in the mirror, it’s not my face that looks back at me.” He shrugged his bad shoulder and fluttered skeletal fingers in the air. “With all we’ve done for the Commonwealth, is it so selfish to ask for a little something back?”

“No,” Amari said, giving her head one resolute shake to emphasise her words. “But why now?”

He looked to the chair where he’d seen Curie take her first breath. “I guess . . . it was just something I wanted. But didn’t dare admit. Besides. We had other things to worry about.”

“There’s ‘we’ again,” Amari murmured, reaching up to rearrange her bangs. “And yet I can’t help but notice you’re the only one here.”

“Does everyone in the Commonwealth need _her_ permission?” he grumbled.

“I guess not.” Amari sighed heavily and he could see the thoughts racing behind her eyes. Something in those disparate wisps of ideas seemed to connect and become more solid because she refocussed her gaze on him. “Yes. I can help you,” she said. “At least I can make it more possible. These days, if I need something from the Railroad, I go to Charmer, but as ‘we’ are alone today, I think you’ll want me to go back to an older contact.”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” he said wryly.

“It’ll take longer. Will you be in Goodneighbor for long?”

He didn’t have an answer for that.

“Well give me a week,” Amari  said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

 

***

 

“Jesus, Nick,” Hancock greeted him the Old State House. “You’ve looked better. What happened?”

Nick reached up to his face. When he pulled his hand away he could see red flakes on the metal. “I really should clean up,” he mused.

“You look positively ghoulish,” Hancock twinkled at him, gesturing for him to sit on the sofa. “What brings you here? Fahrenheit says our good General’s not with you.”

“Still in Sanctuary,” he agreed.

“Deacon says you’ve been acting weird.” Nick grimaced and Hancock laughed, reaching for an inhaler. “Yeah,” he shook the canister and grimaced to hear its rattle. “Deacon arrived just after you did. You can guess who sent him on your tail.”

Nick just nodded. “Where is he now?”

Hancock shrugged and tossed the empty inhaler aside. “Who can say? So what’s the problem, Valentine?”

Nick studied his old friend for a while and eventually shook his head. “Nothing important,” he promised. “Hancock, you got any jobs that need doing? I need to keep busy for a while.”

The ghoul rubbed at the ropy flesh along his jaw, studying Nick much as Nick had studied him. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I’ve always got ways to keep a man busy, or to keep him from thinking, or to keep him from his lady.” Hancock narrowed his bloodied eyes at him. “But you know I won’t cross you-know-who. Do I need to worry about upsetting her?”

Nick studied his hands and watched as, almost of its own volition, the silvery fingers reached into his pocket for the nearly empty cigarette packet. He turned the cigarette over between his fingers and then tucked it into the band of his fedora. “No,” he said at last. “I’m doing this for her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nick is a lot of fun to write but next chapter we return to Nora . . . tune in next time!


	3. Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Pay no attention to what's said_   
>  _Why one should tear the seam of anyone's dream_   
>  _Is over my head_   
> 

Nora crouched by the pile of Raider supplies Cait and Jun had gathered and tried not to let her worry show on her face. She hunkered deeper into the heavy Brotherhood coat she’d salvaged from the Prydwyn and glanced in the direction of Sanctuary, hidden behind the trees and across the river and beyond strong walls. This was a lot of weaponry to come so close to home. “Well done,” she said, and marvelled that her voice didn’t crack.

Proud of herself, Cait just shrugged and smirked a little. “They weren’t that tough.”

Nora thought that Jun might disagree but didn’t raise the point. She got to her feet and scanned the horizon. “How many got away?”

“A few,” said Jun flatly.

A few too many then. It had to come back to Ava in the end, and if there was a Raider group that knew Ava was in Sanctuary then all the synths in Sanctuary might be in danger. Sanctuary was only as valuable as the number of synths it could safely protect. With one in particular weighing heavy on her mind. She’d promised him she’d be back before nightfall too. The pistol on her hip was practically singing, the rifle slung over her shoulders willing her further into the Commonwealth.

Kill all threats.

The Commonwealth did things to a person’s mind.

“We’ll light the pyre after,” Jun said in a quiet voice, gesturing to the larger pile of bodies that had been separated from the gear. There was a curious timber to his words that made her feel cold even beneath the heavy sheepskin.

“Okay,” she nodded. “I’ll see you back at Sanctuary. Going to head down to the Abernathys, see how they’re doing.”

“You want company?” Cait called after her but she just raised her hand in goodbye, striking out over the scrubland. She walked alone, drifting closer to the outskirts of Concord than she strictly needed to. She watched a raddoe and calf creep over ruined tarmac. She knelt by a gnarled tree stump, watching them pass with her rifle cradled gently against her chest. If she’d been heading straight back to Sanctuary, or if she’d had the time to process the meat, she’d have welcomed the opportunity to hunt, but not when the mother had her baby in tow. Still, the raddoes were protective mothers, she didn’t lower her rifle entirely until the pair were safely away into the forest.

“God speed, little one,” she murmured, and waited just a little while longer before continuing her journey.

The traders were saying Sanctuary was bigger than any settlement in the Commonwealth apart from Diamond City, and some of them were minded to argue the point. One of the more recent names she’d collected since leaving the Vault was Mayor, and it might have been her least favoured. Her path with the law had never been intended to take her into politics, if she’d wanted all that her mother would have been proud of her.

It still smarted, a little, that she was still living in the house her mother had bought for her. In those first few weeks, learning the way of life in the Commonwealth, she’d thrown herself into the repair of Sanctuary. She practiced sharp shooting with Preston in the evenings, and worked her muscles to agony during the days, and in the nights she tried to imagine how she could find her son in this world. It had been a nuclear baptism.

It was good for Shaun to have that link to the old world, and at least tactically speaking it was secure. But she had no great love for the walls she’d wept, sweated and bled over.

She took her time on the road, cautious without someone watching her back. It was strange to be out here on her own. She’d never been one for solitude, she liked the sounds of people all around her. Nick was the one to take himself off to recover after a half hour of conversation.   

Whatever was eating him, she knew she had to be the cause of it. He wasn’t spending all this time away from Sanctuary because he had any great hatred of its little houses, he probably cared about the place about as much as she did.

It might have been Shaun. She hoped, fervently, that it wasn’t. But at the end of the day wasn’t she asking him to become a father too? And a father to a boy who wasn’t strictly human.

At first, she’d thought of the other Shaun, the first Shaun, as the _real_ Shaun. She’d cursed him from knowing her heart would fall for the boy the moment she saw him, that her heart could not be dissuaded by arguments of logic or plastic. Yet she’d found thoughts of Shaun’s synthetic origin crept further and further from her traitorous mind until her Shaun, the second Shaun, was the _only_ Shaun that she had ever loved.

She lingered for a while at a burnt out car, convinced she could hear something moving in the treeline. The light was beginning to wane and it would be up to Codsworth to feed Shaun, put him to bed, read him a bedtime story from the corrupted libraries of his antique brain. Dogmeat would sit by the boy’s side like a shadow until she returned. She got the impression the dog liked Shaun better than anyone else.

As it should be. Kids needed dogs.

She could make it back to Sanctuary by nightfall if she hurried, she could even make it to the Abernathys, check in, then hit Sanctuary in time to kiss Shaun’s forehead before he slept if she really picked up the pace. But she didn’t.

Damn it but she needed the space to think.

Nick was good with her son, so good with him. If she’d worried, even just a little, that having so many synths around would have got Shaun thinking about his own existence, she’d decided that giving the boy the opportunity to witness his mother happy was worth the risk. Even inside Sanctuary’s safety there were precious few good relationships. But then, that had been the case even in her time. She remembered sneaking looks at Nate’s parents in the kitchen of their tiny home in Quincy, fascinated by their closeness, their laughter, their naked, time-rushed affection for one another. Not like her parents at all.

And Nick was good for her. She loved him. She could say that honestly. She thought she would have loved him even if Nate was still alive. Loved him from afar maybe, with fluttering heart and dry lips. Maybe because he was so different from her loud and brashy husband. Maybe because he knew the old world like she had. Maybe just because the universe owed her something.

His silences were painful. But that he no longer met her gaze when she flirted . . . that was agony. To watch him through lowered eyelashes and hear him  distract her by calling on Shaun or the dog or, hell, even Sturges.

The light of the Abernathy’s place cut her thoughts short and she sauntered into the settlement for leftover dinner, greeting them as friends, hearing their complaints and their little wins. This was the life she was born for, her mother might have said. Looking after the commonfolk. And she did love it, genuinely.

She’d always found other peoples problems easier to solve than her own.

From Blake, his daughters and their various farm workers she learned that there had been a number of Raiders sighted on their borders, but they hadn’t ventured much closer than that. One of the workers had heard of a whole caravan going down south of Lexington, though that started a debate with one of the others who disagreed. They cracked out some moonshine in her honour and she drank and laughed and even allowed herself to practice her third best smile on Blake. It was enough to make Connie put her hand on her husband’s shoulder, and that was a boon to Nora’s ego

“Thanks for stopping by,” Blake whispered, shaking out the bedroll. “It’s always good to see you.”

“I should do it more often,” she said, laying rifle down on the floorboards.

Blake was considering the sleeping arrangements with a frown. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have one of the beds?”

“This is fine,” she assured him with a hand on his arm, and she liked the way he jumped a little beneath her touch.

“I know you’re a busy woman,” Blake said, picking up the earlier trail. He had a good head of height on her, much like Nick, but that was where all similarity was gone. Flirting with a married man because her man was out sulking, she grew more like her mother every day. She let her hand fall and turned back to the bedroll. On the ground floor of the shack, she was vulnerable to the mice and the dust, but she knew she wouldn’t be sleeping much.

“Thanks for the bed,” she said, getting to her knees. Blake was quick to leave after that and she lay down on the ground, remaining fully clothed and listening to the creaks of the house around her, the rasp of people breathing, the odd cough, the low murmurs. She hoped Shaun wasn’t lying up too, worrying about her. She’d apologise and kiss his forehead and hold him tight when she got back.

She lay awake all night, her cold back the evidence that the one she really wanted to help wanted nothing from her.


	4. Someone To Watch Over Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
>  _Although he may not be the man some_   
>  _Girls think of as handsome_   
>  _To my heart he carries the key_   
> 

She stayed the next night and Sanctuary and the morning after she was on the road, a light pack slung over her shoulder and her rifle in her hands. She walked alone, without a soul to watch her back but the Raiders and beasts that lurked in the Commonwealth.

She could have had the company if she’d wanted it, or needed it. But Cait needed to stay somewhere where her violence could be put to good use, Codsworth and Dogmeat needed to protect Shaun, and there were no good stories where she was headed.

Her destination was no further south than Lexington and she expected to reach the outskirts of the town just after noon, if the road was quiet.

Of course it wasn’t. She chose to skirt around the swarm of bloodbugs which added an hour to her trip and then her solitude made her cautious. She hung back from Lexington’s boundaries, watching the buildings through her scope until she was convinced her approach was safe.

Distance had become a funny thing since leaving the Vault, easier measured in fear than in miles or hours. The journey from Sanctuary to Lexington inspired a healthy respect in her, made her reluctant to leave a vantage point until she’d talked herself into it. And she’d been spoiled by the company she’d kept. Had MacCready been in town she’d have asked him to come with her, but seeing he was on his way to the Capital wasteland to bring his son back to Sanctuary, he might not have agreed to come. Only a fool leaves their son to go hunting in a place like this.

Her prey wasn’t in Lexington proper, it would be too dangerous among the Raider infested rooftops. Nora had a few options, but went for the one her gut liked, and she reached the old nursing home in the afternoon. It was surprisingly warm for the time of year and she had unbuttoned her lambskin coat, letting it flap in the gentle breeze as she approached.

Sheep would solve so many problems. Food. Wool. Hide. Skeletons for glue. Horns for hilts and cups. She’d give almost anything for a pair of sheep and kept hoping some would bound out from the well-picked over wreckage of the Prydwyn. Two headed, no doubt, as that was what the radiation seemed to favour. Mean as heck. But they’d be damned useful.

Her quarry bounded from Mystic Pines with arms windmilling and cheeks flushed. “Cherie! What are you doing here? Is everyone well? Little Shaun is not ill, is he?” Curie embraced her tightly and then exclaimed a little over her dustiness, guiding her back into her makeshift base.

“How’s the data collecting going, Curie?” Nora asked softly, inspecting the numerous salvaged packs that were scattered around Curie’s living space. “Well, I see?” She picked her way over meticulously sorted scrap, aluminium cans glinting apart from the tin ones, food arranged in rows along the few remaining shelves and stood in the middle of a circle of what she could only describe as ‘medical supplies’ in the most generic of ways.

“Oh!” Curie batted at the air to discourage her. “It isn’t so much. But I do think I will need to wait for that caravan to come back after all.”

Nora suppressed a smile. ‘That caravan’ was under her orders to stop at a few places regularly, Mystic Pines being one of them, to pick up Curie’s collections for very reduced rates. The old caravaneer liked the job and was rewarded handsomely for his reliability, but he and Curie seemed incapable of understanding one another, accents so fiercely opposed to one another. “That’s good,” she said. “Do you think you’ll be coming back to Sanctuary soon?”

“Perhaps,” Curie said. She had a bedroll stretched out behind a neat line of packs and she crouched down beside it, removing some dried mole rat meat from a piece of parchment and holding it out to Nora.  “Are you hungry?”

She admitted she was and they sat together, chewing on the tough jerky and drinking some unpalatable herbal brew that Curie favoured. It was nothing like tea. Nora listened to Curie talk about her data, the illnesses she’d recorded in her latest travels, the people she’d saved, the ones she’d lost. Curie talked until it got dark and Nora was sitting on the creaking floorboards, glad of her sheepskin coat once more.

“But why have you come to find me?” Curie asked as though it was a natural segue in their conversation.

Nora considered the woman, running her thumb over the golden band on her ring finger. “I was wondering when you last spoke to Nick, actually,” she asked outright.

The scientist thought about this for a moment, lips pursed. She ran her hand over her scalp, further ruffling the close cropped black hair. “Hmm . . . I think when I was last in Sanctuary, and just before he went to the Cooperative to deal with those raiders.”

She nodded. That was a good month ago, the last long trip out he’d taken. “Did you talk about anything in particular?”

“No,” Curie shook her head. “Mr Valentine is always so nice.” Her smile and her tone warmed the whole room. “He was asking me how I was, and he wanted to know all about my last trip. I had just got back in fact. He asked me if I was liking my body, if I felt like it was mine yet.”

“And do you?” Nora prompted, leaning forwards a little.

Curie beamed at her. “Of course! It is such a thing to have ten fingers!”

Nora laughed outright, leaning her back against the wall again, watching the scientist chatter on about the delights of her synthetic body. She ought to have worried more about Curie’s unsupervised research trips, but Curie seemed to perplex this post-war world. Her enthusiasm for its secrets and her delight in its mysteries was so unusual it was as though the rocks and stones themselves softened to keep her safe. She’d never met a settlement who didn’t love the woman, and they were forever requesting her visits, hoping she could cure all their maladies.

“You should sleep,” Curie said suddenly, half way through a spiel on the sensitivity of a forefinger. “I’ll keep watch.”

Sleep wasn’t going to come easy, but she agreed. It was always easier to agree with Curie.  She crawled onto the bedroll, set the rifle by her head, and closed her eyes. Curie moved restlessly between her trinkets, sometimes lifting a silver locket and placing it somewhere, mumbling something about the antibacterial properties of silver. Then she would put it back in its original place and say that it was more important that she investigate the promising strain of genetic resistance to the common cold she’d found in Nordhagen. Nora listened in patches and snippets, sometimes waking with a start, sometimes just drifting back to consciousness.

 

 

 

She was dreaming a dream she’d had many times before. Dressed for court, that little navy skirt suit she’d loved so much, her nails polished to a high shine and her hair perfectly curled. But she was walking through the shining, echoing halls of the Institute, on her way to lay siege to the most powerful force in the commonwealth. Halfway along the corridor she spotted her trust hunting rifle, modified just the way she liked it.

But if she picked it up, the oil would get under her fingernails, ruin her smooth hands, and she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t show up to court like that. What if it was old Judge Holliday, who only tolerated his opposing counsel when they wore tight skirts? And even then he wasn’t prone to believing innocent until proven guilty.

So she left it, as she always did. But this time the interminably long corridor didn’t open out onto a blood soaked atrium. She found herself walking along a cobbled Boston street, towards a bar lit with neon yellow. And in the way of dreams the next thing she was doing was taking a seat at the bar, holding an ice cold gin and tonic in her hand, beads of condensation dripping down the glass.

“Are you gonna drink that or just make eyes at it all night?” a man’s voice drawling in her ear, his warmth at her back, his left hand on her waist.

She tilted her head to allow him access to her neck, and she smirked at the bartender who busied himself drying a glass. She could see herself in the grease stained mirror hanging behind the bottles of whiskey and gin, her cheeks slightly flushed, a man with ragged holes in his grey face was nuzzling the soft skin above her pulse, his fedora slightly askew, and his silvery hand on her shoulder. “You’re very forward for a stranger,” she murmured.

His other hand, his flesh hand, was slipping down from her waist, beneath the lip of the bar to rest on her thigh. His hand felt as though it was made of lead, weighing heavy on her skin, the heat of him seeping through the thick wool of her skirt. “You’re just that irresistible,” he purred, tearing his mouth from her skin like hurt him to do so and she turned her head towards him so they were nearly nose to nose. She found herself staring into neon yellow eyes.

“Do you have a name, stranger?” she asked.

He stepped back just a little, but it was enough to make him move his hand from her thigh, sliding it up to her hip and then along to the small of her back so he could lean against the bar, his silver arm resting against the railing. She missed the heat of him intensely. “They call me, Valentine,” he told her.

“Oh.” She paused to take a drink, feeling the beads of water on the glass pool against her lips, and she could see the stranger watching her swallow. When she was done, she placed the glass back on the coaster and straightened her back a little, pretending to turn her attention back to a line of the bottles behind the bar. “Would you say you suit your name?” she asked.

The blue skirt lay crumpled on the weather worn floorboards, her jacket lying on the last step of the stairs. Her pale blouse was wadded up as a pillow on the filthy mattress and above them a radstorm was blotting out the stars. She was kneeling on the mattress, her elbows digging into the poorly stuffed mattress, her hair slicked against her forehead as Valentine’s weight bore down behind, invading and filling her, shaking her backwards and forwards. The heat was unbearable, the sweat sliding down between her breasts as they quivered with her movement.

This wasn’t quite right. This was the wasteland, some half crumbled ruin. This wasn’t the sort of place she stopped to play in.

But with Valentine behind her, driving into her, she didn’t think too long on the oddity of it, she just tried to hold on to the world.

At last she was lying on her back, staring up at the storm, while Valentine dressed himself in the shadows. Her limbs were impossibly heavy, her skin prickling with the heat. Maybe the rads were burning her to death. Cooking her from her marrow outwards. “Won’t you stay?” she breathed.

“I told you, doll,” he said, pulling his trenchcoat over his shoulders and settling his fedora on his head. Only now did he turn to look at her. “If you want something more than this you’ll need to leave that husband of yours.”

She managed, with great effort, to lever herself up onto her elbows and watch his retreat to the stairs. He stooped to pick up her discarded coat and hung it on the bannister. “My husband’s dead,” she said, frowning at him. Her gaze flicked to her left hand, to the gold band that glinted there.

And suddenly the ring was constricting, pinching nerve and blood vessels. She cried out, clutching at it with her right hand fingers, screaming as it tightened and tightened, while Valentine watched her dispassionately.

 

 

 

“Cherie?” Curie got within a foot of her bedrool and she jerked awake, pistol in hand. She was soaked with sweat, the unseasonable heat had made her sheepskin jacket a poor choice to sleep in. Curie crouched in a patch of sunlight, sympathy writ large on her face.  “You were dreaming,” Curie murmured, nonplussed by the barrel staring her in the face.

Nora managed a nod and swallowed, her mouth too dry, her skin far too hot. She lowered her pistol and clawed at her coat, removing it and loosening the flannel shirt beneath. Her fists clenched around the soft cotton lapels and she pulled, exposing the top of her chest to the cooler air. “God,” she murmured, closing her eyes and tilting her face up to expose as much of her skin to the air as she could.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” Curie asked softly.

Nora shook her head. “Just . . . insecure,” she whispered.

Curie nodded and shuffled a little closer now it was safe to do so. She placed a hand on Nora’s shoulder. “You are a wonderful and brave woman, and I am so pleased to call you my friend,” she said, and Nora had to smile, shaking her head just a little. “You are,” Curie insisted. “But, my friend,” and her expression fell, “the radio men are calling again. Taffington Boathouse is being sieged by Raiders and they want people to help them.”

Nora sagged a little. What she wouldn’t give for a shower, for soap, for anything. She reached up to rake her hand through her hair and caught sight of the gold band glinting on her ring finger. “Ahh,” she grimaced. She shook herself just a little and snatched up her rifle, pack and coat. “Time to go then.”

Curie glanced at her collection, her hesitation only brief, but accompanied by a heartfelt sigh. “I will come too,” she said.

She was back on the road by the early morning, Curie by her side with a considerably heavier pack, filled with all the things she absolutely couldn’t risk losing to any scavvers who might go through Mystic Pines. Even though Nora promised that no one else would see the value in burnt books and mildewed folders, Curie took her precious data with her.

Nora left with what she’d brought, the only change being the gold ring looped through a cord and slung around her neck. Her hand felt bare, and so very light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I [tumbl](http://palim-writes.tumblr.com/) now! Come say hi so I don't feel like a lonely old internet person.


	5. Orange Coloured Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
>  _Cause the ceiling fell in and the bottom fell out_   
>  _I went into a spin and I started to shout_   
>  _I've been hit, This is it, this is it._   
> 

Deacon finally gave up and approached him out in the open as he stood against a half crumbled wall, smoking his second last pristine cigarette. He wasn’t sure when he’d find another preserved packet and the spoiled ones just didn’t have the same smell, so he was taking his time, savouring the snakes of smoke that spiralled up in front of his face.

“Got bored at last?” Nick asked, flicking ash into the earth.

“Ha ha,” said Deacon, doing a very passable limp as he approached in the getup of a caravaneer. “Just wondering what’s keeping you.”

“Out of curiosity, what were you going to do when we reached Taffington?” Nick finished the cigarette with a regretful sigh. He stubbed it out on a loose brick behind him.

“I’d be responding to a settlement in distress, just as any Minuteman would,” Deacon shrugged. “You’ve never made me yet.”

“Sure, because that definitely wasn’t you outside Bunker Hill the first time Nora walked through the gates cursing out the Freedom Trail,” Nick drawled, taking the lead northwards.

“Nora didn’t like the Freedom Trail?” Deacon affected shock at this, falling into step beside him. “Now she’s never told me _that_.”

Nick snorted, continuing a slow pace towards Taffington. Cutting up through Cambridge was risky, but he had reasonable faith in his and Deacon’s abilities to keep them mostly intact. Still Cambridge was a bit of an unknown quantity since the destruction of the Institute. Nick only knew he was taking the most unpredictable route to Taffington, and Nick wasn’t possessed of Deacon’s levels of self deception. He was doing this because if a fight happened to come to him he’d take it gladly.

They walked together, Nick with his pistol and Deacon with an ugly sawn-off shotgun, studying the canyons of ruined buildings around them, but progressing unhindered. After a while, Deacon couldn’t take the silence anymore and said, “So what is this all about anyway?”

“Well, you see, we befriended in our various roles a woman who for some reason thinks she can instil some sense of justice in this twisted up world, and because of her whenever Raiders think they can bully some lost, innocent souls, we all don the Minuteman cap and come running.”

Deacon was trying very hard not to laugh, even biting the corner of his lips to keep it bubbling forward. “Huh, ‘s’at so?”

“Surprised you haven’t spotted it already,” Nick added. They paused at an intersection where a long dead van had careened up against a bridge. They waited a while before going on, Nick browsing the surroundings out of force of habit, on the eye out for anything salvageable.

“You know she didn’t ask me for a full report,” Deacon said when they’d started moving again. “She just wanted you safe.”  He glanced sidelong at Nick, gaze still hidden by the tinted glass. “So what I’m saying is, if it’d help to talk  . . .”

“I’m taking dance class,” Nick tilted his head so far his fedora was endangered, which only served to set off Deacon’s suppressed laughter again. “Seems they made me with two left feet.”

“Fine,” Deacon said affably, and it wasn’t too long after that they met some fleeing Raiders and were able to pick them off.

 

Taffington itself had the look of one of Nora’s settlements. She put her faith in walls and defences that didn’t need to sleep, and light. Every settlement who asked for her help would soon get lit up so brightly the walls would be humming. She’d told him once that lights discouraged antisocial behaviour, and he thought he remembered something like that from his law days too, but he fancied that she just liked the look of civilisation.

The traders were tidying up around the walls, a pile of corpses burning not too far off, and they greeted Nick and Deacon’s arrival with weary acceptance. He spotted a Minuteman on the dock and the familiar sight of long-legged Curie chasing after the more wounded of the settlers with a fearsome looking stimpack.

And Nora. He didn’t know why he’d expected to see her but for some reason she was no surprise, standing in the twilight with her rifle hanging over her shoulder, the soft collar of her coat turned up against the breeze coming in off the water. When she spotted them incoming her eyebrows raised, apart from the end of the left hand one, still scar knotted, and then she raised her hand in greeting.

“Guess I’ll do the report.” Nick handed off his pack of salvaged Raider gear and goods to Deacon and crossed the broken up road towards her. She watched his progress over the broken ground, her eyes following though she held her head still. This was the look she reserved for radstags and radscorpions, waiting to see if they’d attack or if they’d let her by. He knew that if he had a heart it would skip, his fingers would shake if his body responded to stress like it should. Instead he was intimately aware of his weight distribution on the rubble, he could identify the exact temperature of the air around her, and he could see the slight unevenness in her stance, like she was ready to run.

He stopped a foot or so from her. She’d positioned herself on a rise, and was on his eye level, just the slightest bit stiff. With her expression solemn and her notched eyebrow she was the fearsome Minuteman General, the Institute’s Bane, the Brotherhood’s Destruction. But then her lips turned upwards, softening the hard line of her cheekbones and crinkling the corners of her eyes. This was the Railroad’s Charmer, the Mayor of Sanctuary. “Hey, Valentine,” she said softly, and he felt the urge to reach for her, kiss her, apologise for his behaviour.

“Hey, doll,” he replied, equally softly. That made her smile grow and he managed one himself. “I hoped you’d be here,” he admitted, standing shoulder to shoulder with her and watching over the repairs.

“Oh?”

“Don’t know why I thought you would be,” he added, reaching into his pocket for the last pristine cigarette he had on him. He opened the pack with skeletal fingers, careful not to shred the cotton. “Maybe I just hoped I could apologise.” He pinched the cigarette between his fingertips and offered it to her first, placing the filter between her lips, striking a match in the lee of his hand and lighting the end while she inhaled.

Nora grasped the filter in the crook of her fingers and exhaled a curl of smoke, judging him through the grey. “And will you?” she asked, her good eyebrow arching once more.

He grinned and captured her hand with his, retrieving the cigarette and taking his own drag. “Yeah,” he muttered, “I’m sorry.”

Her shoulders sagged a little and she huffed quietly with suppressed laughter. “How was Goodneighbour?” she asked with a sly look to her and he grimaced.

“Now I know you haven’t spoken to Deacon yet,” he said, handing the cigarette back to sweeten her again.

“Deacon?” she asked innocently, blowing a smoke ring into the air. “Haven’t seen him in ages!” Her faux innocent tone was altogether too close to the sultry dame she played when they were in Diamond City and had the office to themselves.

“Well I’m going to make myself useful,” he said, heading down to the broken wall.

She waved while finishing his last cigarette.

 

By the time the night had truly fallen Taffington was close to secure again. Curie had mended what she could of its traders and Deacon what he could of their turrets. Nora took up a chair in what the traders affectionately referred to as the parlour, with the view out of the water, and held a court to hear the various complaints and woes of Taffington’s people. Nick secured himself in a corner and watched her work, leaning against the wall as he tried to guess what solution she’d come up with next. The group at Taffington were mostly merchants, with no kids in the camp, and they’d converted the old boathouse into a store. As far as Nick could tell, Bunker Hill were trying to freeze them out, unhappy about another networked group of traders working so close and yet relatively free of Raider nuisances. Some of the traders were even suggesting that Bunker Hill had been the real originators of this attack. Nora didn’t laugh outright at this, which Nick marvelled at, and she assured them Bunker Hill would trade more with them in future, which he had no idea how she’d achieve.

Though he didn’t doubt she would.

As people began peeling away he caught the arm of a scrawny young chap and asked quietly “Where will she sleep?”

“There’s a really good bed in the old bathroom, it’s usually Chloe’s but she’ll give it up tonight,” the boy said assuredly, and Nick nodded, releasing the kid’s arm. He spotted Curie falling asleep sitting upright in the kitchen and crept over to shake her shoulder and point her towards the stairs. Deacon seemed to have disappeared, perhaps checking out Covenant. It was the only settlement they still had a strict no-synths rule for and Deacon liked to keep abreast of what was happening there. It was one less lamb to corral at least.

When Nora stifled her first yawn by tensing her jaw and flaring her nostrils, Nick intruded on her little circle of acolytes and started loudly suggesting sleep until Nora was able to escape her doting public and retreat up the creaking stairs. Nick followed close on her heels and placed a hand on the flat of her shoulder blade to guide her towards the empty bed in the corner. It was still just a bare mattress but was clean at least and the frame didn’t cry out in metallic pain when Nora crawled onto it. The next bed was only a foot or so away with a slumbering merchant sprawled out on top of it. Curie had the bed on the far side of the room and those others not on watch were creeping up the stairs.

Nora was wriggling out from her coat and rolling it up as a pillow. She glanced up at Nick and then at the mattress. It was all the invitation he needed to ease himself onto the mattress too, lying on his right hand side to give her as much privacy as possible from the rest of the room. She rolled so her back was curled up against his front, and he draped his left hand over her hips, prepared to watch her drift off.

The old house creaked and groaned as the last residents crossed the floorboards, heading for the last beds, doubling up where the Minutemen had displaced them. Those on guard duty bunkered in for the night, the wind whistled over the tarp covered roof, and on the far side of the room someone began snoring.

Nora’s hand covered his, warm and strong, the embrace of a lover missed. He pushed his lips against the nape of her neck, his nose bending against her hairline, and he kissed her briefly. Merely a brush of lips against skin. Her shoulders pressed harder against his chest, her spine arching for a moment and her hand pushing against his, before her hips settled back against his. He skimmed his fingertips under the waistband of her pants, smiling to himself as she rolled her hips again.

“Quiet,” he murmured, not her strongest suite. He swore he could hear her biting her lip as she nodded frantically, her hair rustling against the mattress.

He worked his fingers further below, her waistband pressing into his wrist. He trailed his fingers over the rise of her sex, drumming his fingertips over the hard little pearl, judging his success by the frustrated, arrested jerks of her hips. He stretched, a perfectly normal, human thing. And the bed groaned in a perfectly normal way. Repositioned, he was able to work his right arm beneath her ribs and up to cup her breast through the fabric of her shirt, pinning her to him as he rubbed his against the slick parting and up and down and again. He squeezed at the nipple beneath his metal thumb and a short, surprised gasp escaped her.

Across the room someone coughed and he stilled, waiting for the sounds of sleep to come back before he resumed the motions of his fingers. He could feel her buttocks clench and release against his hips, hear the hitch in her breathing, and he applied his fingertips against her skin, slow and regular and with pressure until she made a soft, contented noise against her coat and placed her hand on his as a signal to stop. He wasn’t entirely sure if she’d come, or just gotten as close as she dared in a roomful of people, but he kissed her neck again and held her tightly. He could feel her body loosen as she dropped off to sleep, quick and easy.

 

Breakfast of eggs and razorgrain mash seemed to go down well with the remaining Minutemen, and Curie most of all who ate Nora’s portion too. The General seemed content to nurse a chicory brew instead, standing out on the dock with Nick. It was decided, without much discussion, that Curie would stay in Taffington to help them out, while Nora would accompany Nick back to Goodneighbor. If Deacon cared to join them, fair enough. They found themselves on the road not long after dawn and Nora said at last “So what’s in Goodneighbor?”

He  sighed as he thought about his answer and Nora let him have the space to think. He knew the frustration of it was likely killing her inside, and it was sympathy more than desire that made him finally say “I went to see Amari.”

She looked at him sharply. “Are you hurt? Is something wrong?”

Nick came to a stop on the road and Nora walked a slow circle around him, studying him with her bottom lip clenched firmly between her teeth. “Something is wrong,” he said, and it stopped her in her tracks. He held his mismatched hands up, “Don’t panic. Nothing dangerous. Just . . . something I want to do.”

“Nick,” she whispered, naked fear on her face.

“Oh, Nora, no,” he groaned, running his palm over his forehead. “I’m doing this all wrong. I want an upgrade,” he spat it out quick and dirty, staring intently at Nora’s feet while she tried to catch up with what he was saying. “I asked Amari to find me a body,” he muttered.

After a moment, Nora started walking again, she continued on the path to Goodneighbor and he had to jog a few steps to catch up. She was marching with a gritted jaw and balled fists.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he ventured, and she glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes and he could feel his bravery wilting. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

Nora looked straight ahead again, wrinkling her nose just a little. This was The Breeding, he guessed, her history she rarely acknowledged. “I was not worried,” she said in a clipped accent.

“Okay,” he said.

“I was not. If you want to disappear for days on end and ignore me when you do return, why should I mind?”

“So, about this new body . . .”

“Why would you want one?” She had become shrill, her arms now tightly crossed over her chest. “It was difficult enough for Curie and.” She bit off that sentence so sharply Nick half suspected her severed tongue would fall from her mouth. “You don’t need a new body,” she muttered instead.

He reached out his silvery hand to brush the small of her back through her coat. “I didn’t say it was something I needed,” he murmured.

“Hmm.”

He let his hand drop to his side and they walked in silence for a while. He longed for a Raider or a molerat or a supermutant. “I don’t remember that last time I woke up,” he said after they crossed the river, “but every morning I look in the mirror I expect to see brown eyes, black hair. I expect to be taller.” She was watching him again so he lifted his incomplete hand. “I want to be able to reach for you and not have to calculate the breaking point of your skin.”

“I don’t need anything different from you,” she swore, reaching for his metal hand. “I don’t need anything but you.”

“And if this isn’t me?” He pulled his cold hand away. “I told you, Nora.   It’s something I _want_ to do.”

As they approached Goodneighbor, she reached for his cold hand again, and they held hands until the supermutants did come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on ze [tumbls](http://palim-writes.tumblr.com/). Or not. I'm not your mother.


	6. My Lips Remember Your Kisses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
>  _My heart remembers the thrill_   
>  _Of moments when you whispered you adore me_   
>  _And the magic of a moonlit hill_   
> 

They spoke with Hancock first and were directed to Amari by Fahrenheit who gave Nora one of her long looks that Nick didn’t understand. Nora muttered something under her breath about the woman and after dumping their packs they made their way to the Memory Den. Nick didn’t ask what that was about. He might have said the privacy was in the name of ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ but the truth was he couldn’t stop thinking about what might be lying in Amari’s basement.

Would it be anything like his memories?

What if it wasn’t? What if those Institute bastards couldn’t translate those feelings into ones and zeroes?

As they entered the dark red hallways, Nora took his hand again. She didn’t let him go until they entered the basement, and Nick froze in his tracks at the sight of a pair of leather boots sticking out from a Memory Lounger. Amari glanced up from her terminal and smiled. “We have a candidate,” she said. “He escaped the Institute but received too much damage.” She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the synth. “The Railroad were quick to agree. Can’t imagine why . . . _Charmer_.”

Nora’s gaze lingered on him even as she walked further into the room, until she was nearly touching the Lounger, then with a tiny nod of her head she looked down to the Synth. He devoted every iota of his processing power to her, watched her shoulders hitch upwards beneath the thick coat, the sudden tremble of her fingers and the exact quavering pitch of her voice as she whimpered, “He’s a red head!”

Her anguish was palpable, an entity in the room with them, aching with fear and hurt. He remembered in Vault 84, when she caught sight of the broad shouldered red headed vault dweller in the canteen and had to retreat into the corridors, shaking so badly Nick had to tell the vaulties she had radsickness.

He couldn’t . . . wouldn’t do that to her. “Amari,” he began.

“Don’t worry.” Amari brushed off his protests with a wave of her hand. “Doctor Sun is on the way here. He should arrive tomorrow. The Mercs I had to pay cleaned out all my goodwill from Hancock,” she added, more to Nora than to him. “And I told them they’d get their other half upon Sun’s safe delivery.”

Pale, but considerably more animated than he was, Nora nodded and started digging in her pockets for her cap purse. “I’ll square your debt with Hancock and pay the Mercs.” She tossed the pouch to Amari. “That’s for your trouble.”

“Thank you,” Amari said graciously, weighing the heavy, clanking pouch in her hand. Nick felt like he ought to speak but wasn’t sure of the words.

“Do you need Nick for anything at this stage?” Nora continued. When Amari declined, Nora thanked her and returned to the door where Nick was still standing, dumbly. “Come,” she murmured as she passed him and he felt his body turn and follow her. Robotically.

They cut a beeline through the streets for the Third Rail where Nora commandeered a side room, a bottle of gin and poured a glass for them both. She pressed one into Nick’s hand and eased him down onto a sofa, taking the other glass for herself and sitting beside him, curling her legs up beneath her and leaning against his shoulder. “Tell me how long you’ve wanted this for,” she commanded.

Nick took a drink. He missed getting drunk. He missed the honesty that gin granted. “The first time I saw Curie walk out of the Memory Den on two long legs,” he said. “Wondered about it then.”

Her frown knitted her brows together. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“We were already on the hunt for Winter’s tapes. I couldn’t ask you to do something else for me. Not with everything else that was going on. And after . . .” He leaned his cheek against the top of her head. “It wasn’t the time,” he said softly. “There were more important things. It took me a long time to come to grips with the idea you   . . . wanted me . . . at _all_.”

She harrumphed under her breath and downed her shot of gin, pouring another with a grimace and a slight cough. She considered the liquid sloshing inside the slightly chipped glass for a few heartbeats and then downed that one too, at which point Nick poured her her third as she sat up a little straighter and shifted her weight so she could look directly at him. “Okay. It doesn’t bother me . . .”

“But?”

“Sometimes . . .” she allowed, extending one finger from the hand she clasped around the gin glass. “You . . . hurt me. With” her gaze dropped to his metal hand before she could finish the sentence. “It doesn’t bother me,” she said again.

He sighed and reached up to scratch where the brow of his fedora rubbed at a proximity sensor on his scalp. “I had hair,” he admitted. “I _miss_ my hair. I can’t pretend there isn’t, just a little, a tiny bit of vanity in this too.”

That made her grin at least and she reached for his hat, stealing it and leaving a kiss on his forehead in its place. She placed the fedora on top of her tresses at a jaunty angle and tilted her shoulders towards him. “ _My_ Mr Valentine, _vain_?” she teased. “With those eyesore signs all over the place?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He topped up her glass. “Keep drinking, sweetheart, maybe this ugly mug will go up in your estimation.”

She sobered and leaned closer to palm his cheek. “This ugly mug is the one I fell in love with, Nick. Don’t insult it. It’s precious to me.”

He cupped her hand with his and wondered, not for the first time, if being on the ice hadn’t short circuited that pretty little head of hers beyond all repair.

After a moment she murmured musically beneath her breath and turned around so she was resting her back against his chest and had her legs stretched out on the sofa, balancing her heels on the curved arm. He rested his chin on the top of her head and wrapped an arm around her torso, their glasses clinking where their hands met at her waist. “What do you look like?” she asked after a moment.

He took a drink. “I have . . . black hair. Brown eyes. My mother was Italian-Irish by way of something. My father was a ghost in the wind. Got the Irish weakness for drink and the Italian name, and about half a dozen other things in there somewhere. I’m about . . . six foot two,”

“Six, two?” She tilted her head to look him in the eye. “I’m going to have to stand on a stepladder to kiss you.”

He grinned. “I miss being tall,” he whispered against her forehead, then kissed her scarred brow. “Gotta have something over you, doll.”

She studied his face. “It’ll be strange,” she murmured. “Maybe . . . you should keep some of this,” she reached up to brush her knuckles over his cheek. “Keep the . . . bones. If not the style?”

“Maybe,” he agreed.

“You know, after Winter, you said that everything you had was his.” She let her hand fall to her side again and lifted her head enough to take a drink. “Do you still feel like that?”

He could feel the smile threatening to split his fragile cheeks. “No.” He squeezed her a little tighter. “I have things the other Nick never had.”

The hand she’d just brushed over his face drummed against her stomach and then she lifted it upwards, waggling the fingers in the air. “For a detective,” she said, “You’re not very observant, are you?”

He found himself staring at the bare finger and reached for it with a silvery hand, stroking where the gold used to lie. “What . . . you didn’t do this for me, did you?” he asked, something gnawing at his wiring inside.

She laced her naked fingers with his. “And you’re not doing this for me, are you?” she said.

 

 

When Sun arrived he was argumentative and mean. His hired guards were meaner still. Nora handed over a Prince’s ransom in caps to the mercs alone and Nick had to swallow down his pride, turn his head so he wouldn’t see. There was something very ugly about how blasé she was about the cost of his happiness.

And then she turned over another sum to Sun. These caps she must have been getting from Hancock. No one walked around with that much. Not even Nora. Hancock would get it back of course, the cost would be borne by Nora in the end.

What would he have done without her? Fallen at the first hurdle no doubt.

She instructed him to go with Sun to engineer his face. She kissed his cheek while the mercs looked on in the Third Rail. “I want it to be a surprise,” she murmured.

She was going to work off his debt. Of that he was sure. What could he say? That he wouldn’t do the same for her?

He and the good doctor descended into Amari’s lair. Nick sat on one side of the _tabula rasa_ and Sun on the other, a series of gleaming tools arranged on the table beside him. Amari made herself scarce. And the work began.

 

 

Amari wasn’t a typical sight in the Third Rail and Nora had to guess the woman was looking for her. Not that there could be much mistaking the intent when Amari began her approach. No one else dared sit next to Nora and her steadily mounting pile of empty bottles.

“You’re drinking that stuff?” Amari eyed the brown glass and eased herself onto a stool beside Nora.

“What’s wrong with the Wasteland’s finest?” Nora wiggled her latest bottle between her fingers. “There are a finite number of pre-war brews out there. We all gotta have our time with the bootleg booze.”

Amari said nothing, drumming her fingertips on the bartop. Her gaze flitted restlessly over Whitechapel and Magnolia, the other drinkers and the few bottles lined up on the shelf.

“Look, doc,” Nora took another swig from her current bottle. “If you’re here to give me bad news can you wait an hour or so? I need some more time.”

“No bad news,” Amari said. “I’m just waiting to make the transfer.” She held her hand up to stall Whitechapel’s approach and shook her head. “No drinks for me, thanks.”

“Are . . .” Nora hesitated, jutting her chin out and bracing her elbows on the bar, contemplating the bottle in front of her. “At the Institute,” she began again, “I was told that my DNA was used to create the Gen 3 synths.”

“It’s possible,” Amari agreed amicably, “Perhaps as a baseline to control for mutations. It would explain their robust health.” Off Nora’s look she cleared her throat. “Oh. I see your concern. I wouldn’t imagine it’s a huge amount of shared genetic material, no more than a third or fourth cousin, given the variation in phenotypes we see.” She glanced Nora up and down. “You have a number of recessive traits, so there must be new DNA in there somewhere.”

Nora blew out the breath she’d been holding through pursed lips. “Please be careful with him, Amari.”

“He means a lot to a lot of people around here,” Amari said. “And I don’t devalue what you have, but many of us have known him for years. It will be stranger for us.”

While Magnolia began her next set, Nora and Amari fell into an uncomfortable silence, which Nora used to finish another dirty cocktail and add another bottle to the line-up. As Whitechapel drifted over she too shook her head and declined the offer.

“Do you want to watch?” Amari asked.

Nora shook her head. “No. No I really don’t.” When the song finished, Amari left, and Nora was left in her six feet blast radius of isolation.

She’d never been a great one for bars. Even during her great rebellion her version of ‘slumming it’ had still involved drinking wine in an apartment, chain smoking and listening to offbeat poetry that gingerly hinted that the left wing might not be all bad. The booze had barely warmed her insides, barely eased the knot in her gut or the tight band around her heart. She jiggled her foot against the stool’s stem, tapped her fingers on ancient formica, chewed ragged a scratch on her bottom lip.

Of all the deserving, worthy souls who could have found themselves in Vault 111, it had been her. And of all the deserving, good things she’d done with her life, at the end of the day it was her breeding that brought the Institute to the Vault’s door. Her good breeding combined with Nate’s good service, and it all came together to find her sitting in a bar, regarding the gold band that dangled from her fingers at the end of a leather thong.

If she’d been holding Shaun when they descended into the darkness of the Vault, Kellogg would have shot her instead of Nate. Nate would have woken, decades later, and emerged blinking into the sun. Nate would have found Codsworth in the ruins of Sanctuary. Nate would probably have found Preston fighting off Raiders. She wondered if Nate’s journey would have been like hers. He wouldn’t have had to spend so long in Sanctuary learning how to shoot, how to fight, how to disarm a man with a knife. Spending the days building and the nights learning until Preston told her she might stand a chance out there. Nate would have made it to Diamond City faster. Maybe he’d even have caught Nick before he’d gotten into bother in Park Street Station.

Nate wouldn’t have spent weeks scoping out the edge of the Glowing Sea. Nate would have charged in, fearless, heedless of danger.

But . . . Nate wouldn’t have found the Railroad like she had. He’d have spent weeks hunting for half forgotten clues. He wouldn’t have emerged from the Memory Den, heard Nick say ‘guess we’re following the Freedom Trail’ and laughed. Nate certainly wouldn’t have grabbed Nick by the lapels and said ‘With their hard-on for their lantern motif? They’ll be near North Church’.

Even if he had, and the thought made her cross her legs, Nate wouldn’t have been able to crack the Railroad’s poor attempt at a code.

Although it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that he’d just blow through the wall.

She could imagine her late husband listening to the people who had guided her on her journey. She hoped he’d see in Des a little of his wife, goodhearted, if occasionally missing the point. She smiled at the thought. Thought she also could picture Nate standing with his arms crossed across his broad chest, listening to Elder Maxson’s bullshit with a gleam in his eye. Nate liked the power and the companionship of the army, and she wondered if the Brotherhood might have replaced something of his lost family for him. Just as the Railroad and their bleeding hearts had replaced something of hers.

Would Nate have destroyed the Institute? She clasped her fist around the golden ring and pressed her knuckles to her lips, breathing slow and steady to remind herself she was still here, still alive.

She could only remember him in glimpses. The fiery copper of his hair in the dawn light, the twinkle of blue eyes crinkled at the edges as they wrestled together beneath the sheets, the feel of his arms holding her close on cold autumn nights in the park, and the scratch of his cheek against her shoulder. How those things coalesced into one person she could no longer remember.

Would her memories of Nick be the same? Would he become a collection of sensations, the hot and cold of his hands, the roughened edges of his lips, and the peculiar inhuman weight of him above her?

The clientele changed and then faded away entirely. Whitechapel sailed between the tables, gathering glasses and wiping off surfaces with a ragged cloth. Nora was nursing another whiskey. It felt, strangely, as though she had swapped shoes with Nate. But back when she had been labouring in an expensive private ward, and he’d been pacing outside. Shaun had been one thing they’d both been happy to spend her mother’s money on.

She could hear the footsteps on the tiled stair, the sound of a coat flapping, and noted the whirr of servos was conspicuously lacking.

Nora knocked back the last of her whiskey, took a deep breath and swivelled on her stool.

Nick Valentine was a tall, slender man who stood in the middle of the empty Third Rail with his hands in the trousers of his pants and his stance spread wide. Nora could feel her tongue drying instantly. She found herself staring at his arms, the white cuffs of his shirt rolled up over his elbows, revealing two smooth, dark arms, his coat slung over his left, leaving his right exposed. His forearm tapered down to a slender wrist that was half hidden by the line of his pocket.

The feel of those silver fingers on her breast were now going to be a disjointed memory, lumped in with all the other things that were in the past.

His shirt hung a little off his shoulders, they were narrower now, and his loosely knotted tie dangled around his neck. A proud Adam’s apple stood out, bobbed a little as her gaze tracked upwards over it, to the narrow, defined jaw. Her gaze lingered on his lips. They looked soft, full. Nora realised she was standing up, approaching him step after torturous step. A Roman nose and deep set eyes that were an alarming, shocking amber, as close to fluorescent yellow as a human . . . or synth . . . might come.  Finally, crammed beneath his fedora, thick black hair, long enough to run her fingers through, a little of it escaping from the cover of his hat.

And just like that, the snippets of the person became the whole man, the new Nick Valentine was something real and solid in front of her.

Nick swallowed and reached up to remove his hat, revealing hair that had evidently been grown and cut to sit slicked back, as had been the fashion when their world had gone up in radioactive smoke. Without any gel it flopped over his forehead, forcing him to rake his fingers through it to keep it off his face. His hand should have been bedecked with a watch and at least one signet ring, and this bar should have been bustling . . . but she was glad it wasn’t.

With his hat grasped in one hand, his coat over the other, he held his arms out to expose himself fully. “What do you think, doll?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders a little.

Nora looked him up and down again, feeling peculiarly short of breath and flushed. “I, um,” she wished she hadn’t finished her whiskey. “What do _you_ think?”

Nick looked down at his chest and shrugged. “I don’t know . . . my hands are warm?”

A giggle bubbled up in her chest and she clamped a hand over her mouth to try and stifle it. Nick’s lips twisted in a wry smile and he rolled his eyes. She pointed up to them. “Those, uh, those are yours, aren’t they?”

“A few things are mine,” he glanced down at himself again. “Maybe shaved off a few years too. I’m not the old Nick, I’m . . .”

“The new Nick.” She stepped inside his reach and contemplated him up close. “If _you_ like it, _I_ like it,” she said.

In a smooth motion he tossed the overcoat to the nearest chair and planted both hands on her shoulders, the solid, even pressure sending shivers down her spine. “There are a couple of things I’d like to try before giving my final verdict,” he drawled, low and sonorous in her ear. Amari had done wonderful things porting that voice over, she thought, and one of those many things she wanted to try was hearing him sing without the modulated undertones.

All in good time.

“Well,” she said, reaching into her pocket. “There’s something I thought you might like to break this new body in.”

Nick’s eyebrows arched until she pulled out a packet of preserved cigarettes, cellophane wrapper still on. His face cracked into pure delight and she cocked a hip, wishing she’d gone the whole nine yards and found something prettier to wear. She held his gaze while she slid a ragged and dirty fingernail beneath the wrapper and unwrapped it slowly, scrunching the plastic beneath her fingers. Nick’s tongue, startlingly red, darted out to wet his upper lip. She flipped the carton top and thumbed a single cigarette upwards from its siblings.

Nick flexed his right hand, but leaned down to wrap his lips around the filter, pulling the cigarette from the pack just by standing up again. Nora reached back into her pocket for the lighter, flicking the catch and waiting Nick to inhale and the end of the cigarette to glow. She watched his eyes flutter shut, long eyelashes obscuring the amber, and his nostrils flared as he inhaled.

“Well?” she asked, nearly bouncing on the balls of her feet.

Nick looked up at the vaulted subway ceiling, contemplating the hit like it was a fine wine, and then he started to cough.

“Maybe those new lungs need to get used to it,” Nora giggled as he regarded the glowing cigarette like it was a viper. She took it from him, holding it neatly between her curved fingers.

Nick braced himself on the back of a chair, covering his coughs with a closed fist. “Uh, yeah,” he managed. “Give it back, I know it gets good eventually.”

“Nuh uh, this one’s mine,” she danced out of his reach, taking a drag for herself. “Besides, don’t you want to try booze?”

She could see his eyes light up, the edges crinkling. “Yeah,” he said, lunging to catch up with her, one arm wrapping around her waist as she reached over the bar for the nearest bottle. “That’s one of the things too . . .” His sentence was muffled as he nuzzled into the crook of her neck, and then his hand slipped beneath her shirt, his right hand spreading over her stomach, warm and solid and soft.

“Hey!”

The shout was so unexpected she dropped the bottle she hadn’t realised she’d been holding, and Nick leapt away from her like he’d been electrocuted. “Fuck!” he gasped, clutching at his chest and turning on the intruder. “John, _Jesus_!”

But Hancock’s expression stalled them both. “Sanctuary,” the ghoul said, already starting to run back up the stairs. “It’s under attack.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think one more chapter. Possibly two if the sin muse strikes me hard. 
> 
> You can come talk to me on [tumblr](http://palim-writes.tumblr.com/), where I struggle to understand how we do things in this new realm of the internet.


	7. It's a Sin to Tell a Lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
>  _I love you, yes, I do, I love you_   
>  _If you break my heart I'll die_   
>  _So be sure that it's true when you say, 'I love you'_   
> 

His palms were damp. His fingers ached from how he gripped his pistol. Inside, his gut was churning, spasming and freezing in alternate turns, his heartbeat an ever racing thump. It was like a complete systems failure, everything screaming at him that it couldn’t continue to operate at this capacity for very much longer.

If this was how he was feeling, how was it for Nora?

She was leading the pack, her rifle unslung, but her shoulders hunched forward against the thundering rain that had broken the unseasonable heat. He wished he knew what he could say to her.

His exhaustion surprised him. His body started to physically shake as the dawn broke over their company as they crossed at Beantown. Curie had to press rations on him, telling him he’d feel better after eating, and even then he couldn’t describe the leaden weight on his eyelids, the hot, angry nipping at the back of his eyes. Amari did warn him the body would want to recover from the transition, and Curie had reiterated it, but _feeling_ it was something else entirely.

But fear. Fear had moved from the abstract concept. He thought he knew fear. He thought worrying about a world without those he cared about was fear.

Fear was the tripping thumps of his heart. Fear was the prickle of his flesh across his whole body. Fear was rising acid in the back of his throat. Fear was an uncertainty in his own body, a lack of faith in what his strength could manage, a doubt in the accuracy of his eye, a knowledge that his fingers were not so quick on the trigger.

And separate from all that was the gnawing thought that he’d given up his strength, his endurance, all those targeting protocols and combat subroutines that he had always known were working in the background. He’d given it up for a body that ached and surged with hormones. A body that would not help protecting Shaun.

He was beginning to understand why the Brotherhood had walked around like tin cans all the time.

By the time the freeway rose up above them in the mist and drizzle, Deacon called their procession to a halt. “We need an hour’s break, at _least_ ,” he said to their stone faced leader. “None of us will be able to shoot straight if we keep going like this.”

“Then we’ll at least draw fire,” Nick snapped before he could stop himself.

“And that’ll be very noble too,” Deacon said, hands raised placatingly. Still, the agent had no intention of letting them go further.

Through the thundering of his blood in his ears and the near incapacitating weight of his limbs he watched Nora turn to look at them. He had the impression that she barely saw her Minutemen, Curie, Deacon, Hancock, him . . . he was sure that all she was seeing was what Raiders did to children, replaying over and over in her mind’s eye.

She met his eyes and snapped “An hour.”

The Minutemen nearly collapsed to their knees, a rumble of sighs and moans. Deacon was quick to order two younger volunteers onto a watch, promising them they’d be relieved soon. Curie approached with her pack, rifling in its depths with one hand to pull out some dried meat. “Eat this,” she said, thrusting it at Nick. “Your body has been through a lot today. Lots of new connections to be made.”

He made a cursory comment about there being enough for everyone even as he was scarfing the food down. The meat was salty, stringy and cold on his tongue. Globules of fat would explode in his mouth as his teeth tore through the stew, sending rivers of oily juice down his throat. His body loved it. Craved it.

Nora approached him as he finished. “You need to sleep,” she announced flatly. “You look like shit.”

“I don’t think I could.” He licked grease from his fingers and she contemplated him.

“C’mere,” she said, softer, and headed for an outcrop of rock. She sat with her back to the stone, as sheltered as they could get in this weather, and gestured for him to sit beside her. When he did, she pulled his shoulders so his head was in her lap, feeling the chill of her rain soaked pants. She draped one arm over his waist and covered his face with his hat, resting her other hand in his hair. “Just close your eyes,” she said.

He did, for her, and because the uneven ground and bitter weather was so uncomfortable he was sure it wouldn’t make much difference, only to find himself being shaken awake what felt like moments later by a bleary eyed Deacon. Nora was looking down at him with her expressionless gaze once more, and she was silent as he scrambled to his feet.

He had made a terrible mistake.

 

 

Their progress was fast and they managed to put Concord to their backs by the middle of the cold, grey morning. Their party had swelled by a handful of Minutemen who’d found them on the road and Nick had found it strange how little attention they paid him.

One of many new things, it seemed.

They were about twenty minutes or so out from the Red Rocket trading stop when they spotted a small troop of Minutemen headed towards them. After exchanging salutes, the groups drew closer and the leader of the newcomers asked “Are you going to Sanctuary? You needn’t bother.”

Nick’s heart sunk through the soles of his boots. The world seemed to tip on its axis.

“Yeah they saw the Raiders off themselves. Ten minutes or so and you’ll see the smoke from their pyres,” the Minuteman was continuing, oblivious to the way the horizon was spinning past Nick’s sight. “They took a few losses but. . .” he shrugged and then caught some of the expressions he was looking at. “You guys from there?”

Nick found himself gravitating towards Nora, reaching for her hand. She took his firmly between her fingers. “Come on,” he said. They could reach Sanctuary within the hour if they hustled.

Sure enough the greasy smoke of burning bodies began to waft over the treeline. At the Red Rocket they heard again how the citizens of Sanctuary had seen off a force that was near a hundred Raiders. Some of the Minutemen decided to go back to their own settlements. Nick kept following Nora, placing one foot in front of the other. When they reached the river they saw that the estimate of a hundred might not have been so far off. The rocks were still streaked with scarlet and even the tall walls of Sanctuary were crumbled and cracked in places. Black gunfire scars and destroyed turrets littered the rooftops and walls.

None of that mattered though because as they walked up the concourse, a slight figure pelted headlong down the ruined tarmac to launch into Nora. “Mom!”

Nora sank to her knees, sobbing and holding her boy to her, while the others around them laughed or looked away or greeted their own friends and companions in Sanctuary. For his part, Nick had to crouch and dip his head between his knees to keep from regurgitating the precious little food he’d eaten in the last two days. He was, dimly, aware of Piper and Nat’s approach, Nat telling Shaun “You see? I told you she’d be coming,” and Nat chattering in that high pitched way of the frightened. The little girl spoke about those she’d help kill and he felt the sickness rise in him again.

He had forgotten just how much _feeling_ was felt in the physical body.

He noticed Shaun fixate on him and drew breath to introduce himself before the boy pushed away from his mother and pointed at Nick. “That’s Mr Valentine’s coat!” the boy all but roared. “Where’s Mr Valentine?” This was directed half at his mother and half at Nick. If the boy had had a gun he’d be aiming it at Nick’s forehead, like some young caravan guard jumpy from the road.

“Where _is_ Nick?” Piper echoed, catching her sister by the shoulders and pulling her closer.

“Shaun, wait,” Nora was saying. She glanced up at Piper, biting her lip, and Nick could see the confusion spreading from Piper to Nat until something dawned on Shaun and he hesitated, looking back at his mother. Nora cupped his cheek with her palm. “It’s okay,” she murmured.

It came to Shaun first and he stared at Nick with frank appraisal. “Nick?” He lingered close to his mother, but watched Nick like a hawk, ready to pounce on any sign of a lie.

Nick could only shrug. “It’s a long story, kid,” he said.

 

 

 

He didn’t see much of the boy for the rest of the day. Nora didn’t want him out of her sight, and Nick couldn’t keep up with her as she did the rounds of the town. He made himself useful the best way he could, reprogramming turrets and salvaging what he could of the traps.

The dusk drew in around Sanctuary, bringing with it more rainclouds, and Nick headed for home like so many of the other weary townsfolk. He lowered himself down on the sofa in Nora’s house, stretching his arms out along the back, letting his head tilt backwards so he was looking up at the patchwork ceiling.

The door opened, the warped wood juddering against the floor, and Nora circled into his vision, sitting heavily on the sofa beside him and curling her legs up so she was tucked in beneath his outstretched arm. She sighed and rested her head against his arm so they were both looking up at the ceiling.

“You okay?” It was all the energy he could muster.

Nora made a strange, low sound that was half way between laugh, sob and scoff. She lifted her head just enough to look down the hallway. “You know . . . I asked Shaun if he’d mind staying with Piper and Nat tonight. Told him I thought Nat could use the company.”

“Hmm,” Nick said.

“Because I think we need to talk.” She settled back against him, heavy and warm through the fabric of his shirt and pants.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” he mumbled. “I don’t know what the hell kind of a use I thought I was going to be once we got here. If those Raiders had still been around . . .”

“The same kind of use as everyone else,” she said gently, tucking a loose strand of his hair back against the rest. Her lone finger tracing above his skin made him flinch.

“I was tired, Nora,” he murmured. “I’m tired as hell right now. If it had come down to it, would I have been able to help?” He reached to rake his hand through his hair and felt a string of curses bubble to his lips that he strangled with a grunt.

“You think I’m not tired?” she asked softly. “I’m exhausted Nick. You had a hard reintroduction to adrenaline and heartbeats and all these things. But remember you wanted this. It’s okay to want something for yourself sometimes, Nick.”

He was about to say something about Shaun, about Nat’s wide eyed horror at having pulled the trigger, about the long, gruelling day they’d spent refortifying, but all that died when her lips touched the side of his neck, just beneath his ear.

It was chaste, for her, and a place she kissed often. Part of their language, their own code. The contrast between the soft and hard skin of her lips, where her teeth had worried ragged scratches that the cold had roughened, was far more dramatic on human than on synth skin.

“Ah,” he groaned without meaning to.

She ran her finger over the shadow of the kiss and he glanced at her. The smile that ghosted at the corner of her lips sent a shock of electricity down between his hips and he found himself trying to swallow, to wet his mouth. “There _are_ other feelings,” she said. “You’ll remember them too. Eventually.” She shifted a little so she was leaning in closer. “Can I kiss you again?”

“Ahh, think I could stand that,” he managed, watching her warily as she leaned in closer again. This second kiss was warmer, open mouthed, on the underside of his jaw. He felt like he was being tasted, like he was being sampled like a wine, like he is a thing that could be consumed by her entirely. The feeling sent shivers down through his bones. Nora’s lips moved to the hollow between his collarbones, her fingertips running over the collar of his shirt, and then to the other side of his jaw, where she finished with a gentle smack of her lips. Her roamings had led her to be leaning directly over him, a little of her weight resting against his chest. He reached for her waist to pull her atop him properly, her legs were straddling his hips. The warmth on either side of him left him short of breath, like the long march from Goodneighbor. She took it as an invitation to continue her sampling, more, brief open-mouthed kisses along his neck and his jaw, each one torturously short. He wanted to dig his fingers into her hips  . . . and realised, abruptly, he didn’t need to calculate the force she could tolerate. His new body was strong, yes, but it couldn’t hurt her unknowingly.

So he gripped her tighter and she hummed appreciatively against his Adam’s apple. If he lowered his chin to his chest he would be able to kiss her on the lips, taste her . . . He coughed and she sat back a little, brows furrowed curiously. “Not good?” she asked, sounding surprised.

“Ahh, no, it is . . . I,” he winced and closed his eyes. It was hard to think much further than the centimetres between them. “This wasn’t why I did it, you know,” he mumbled, even as his thumb was, of its own volition, trailing under the hem of her shirt to brush the softness of her skin.

“I know, sweetheart,” she whispered. Another short and sweet kiss to the side of his neck. He opened his eyes to find her gazing into them. “Even if you had, would it be so bad to want something and to get it for once?” She answered this herself by kissing him on the lips, sucking on his bottom lip as she had done so many times before. But this time his body _responded_ , the tiny blood vessels opening beneath the skin, enervating the sensitive flesh, and his body groaned without him having to prompt it into the simulacrum of sentience.

He gasped as Nora’s fingers worked on the buttons of his shirt, exposing his chest to the cool air. He repaid the favour by tugging her shirt up over her head, enjoying the sight of her body twisting to free herself from the fabric. And then he kissed the tops of her breasts, tested how soft she was to his new senses.

“I want to try something,” she murmured in his ear, closing the sentence by nipping at his earlobe. He could only describe his thoughts as ‘short circuiting’, and nodded dumbly against her skin, only to complain wordlessly as she wriggled down from his lap and dropped to the floor between his knees. “Now I wish I could say this was one of my talents,” she said, working his pants open and flashing him a wicked smile that he could feel drawing the blood away from his brain. “But I’ve always been better at the words than anything else,” she said, her tousled-haired head lowering to his lap.

Nick had to throw his head back to stare at the ceiling again, bunching his fists against the back of the sofa. “Christ,” he swore as her tongue traced over the tip of him.

“Hmm,” she said, and he could feel the words against his skin. “So you’ll have to tell me what you like. Give me pointers.” She enveloped him in her wet mouth, the silence straining at his eardrums as she moved up and down, her head slowly bobbing in front of him.

“Shit,” he muttered, “I think you, ahhhhh, got the hang of that.”

She was trying not to laugh, little shudders running up his body. Entirely outside of his command, his thighs started to clench and relax in time with her motions. He dug his fingernails into his palms and bit his bottom lip, and then she ran her fingers along the underside of his dick, in front of her lips, and then around and beneath his balls. He cried out, high pitched and needy. There was a warm coil of rope inside his stomach, unfurling with each suck, and he wasn’t sure how much heat his body could stand.

“You could go a little faster if you want,” he managed, and she responded by upping the pace and then, after a few strokes like that, swirling her tongue against his tip before swallowing him up again.

If it was supposed to be a metaphor for their whole relationship, the ease and artifice by which she made him feel and act like a real human, then he wasn’t sure where the ending was going to figure into it. A hot, sticky mess?

Would . . . could these Gen 3s reproduce?

The further complications of that line of thought were dumped by a brain that was being starved of blood and processing power.

Coming feels like a he is a vessel being filled to the brim with water, and finally it sloshes over the top. Or like the tiniest moment after he first sneezed, but stretched out to his whole body. Or like the snap of a guitar string, irrevocably broken and still thrumming with the energy that had destroyed it.

Nora rocked back on her heels, drawing the back of her hand over her lips and smirking at him. She placed her hands on his knees and waited, seemingly content just to watch him work through the thoughts that were fuzzy and slow as the circled around inside his skull. At last he reached for her, taking her hands in his, and pulling himself up to his aching feet, tugging her up along with him. Hand in hand, they headed for the bedroom, the sound of the rain on the roof top muffling their quiet instructions and praise throughout the night.

When he woke again he was lying face down on the blanket, Nora beside him with one arm draped over the small of his back. The dawn light spilling in from the window had reached his pillow and he blinked at the sensation for a while. Every part of him ached, and not all of him ached pleasantly.

He needed to piss.

He wondered how long he could risk it, where the boundaries of this new body were, but long before he got the chance to test it the pain in his side grew too intense and he crept from the bed, snatching up pants and shirt from the floor. He was glad he did as he escaped to the outhouse because Shaun was sitting at the breakfast bar, reading a Grognak comic with a mug of something at his elbow. Nick nodded to him as he passed, the demands of his bladder winning out over courtesy or concern. By the time he returned from the cold outside, Shaun was boiling a kettle over the coal fire stove top. “Do you want something?” the boy asked, pointing to the various supplies.

“Never could stand that chicory stuff your mother drinks,” Nick admitted. “What I wouldn’t give for a coffee though.”

“Mom says they’re similar enough,” Shaun said doubtfully, climbing back onto his stool.

Nick explored the cabinets and eventually pulled down the battered coffee tin they stored the roast chicory grounds in. “I guess it’ll have to do,” he muttered. “If it doesn’t just stink of rationing though.”

“You never know,” Shaun piped up, with his mother’s quick and easy cheerfulness, “maybe your new body will like the taste.”

Nick had to grin at that and he nodded, rolling back his cuffs as he began searching for other foodstuffs. “You must need a breakfast,” he said.

“Yeah.”  The boy grinned. “I’m pretty hungry.”

“Sure you are.” He placed the iron skillet on the stove top and began searching for the Brahmin-butter, his own stomach rumbling. “From what I hear, you worked real hard yesterday. I’m proud of you kid. Sorry you had to do it, but proud of the way you did it.” He stole a quick look at the boy over his shoulder as he worked, something that would have been easier in his old body, and spotted the rueful look in the boy’s eyes.

“I hope it doesn’t happen again,” Shaun said softly.

“Me too,” he agreed, cracking eggs into the pan.

“Do you get hungry now?” Shaun asked, flipping a few pages of his comic as though he was trying to change the subject. “Now you’re like me?”

The last eggshell split and spilled its treasure onto the sizzling metal and Nick nodded, hoping his new body wasn’t betraying his thoughts.

“You’re a synth like me,” Shaun added, with a studied casualness to his voice. This time, Nick turned to look at him. The kid was studying his comic with carefully arched eyebrows and furiously blank expression.

Nick poured himself a mug of that wretched chicory brew and drank, watching Shaun’s desperate attempt at ambivalence. “Not exactly like you,” he said at last, listening to the sounds of the eggs frying away behind him.

Shaun was nodding slowly and he finally lifted his gaze to look at Nick. “Please don’t tell Mom I know,” he whispered.

From where Nick stood he could see Nora’s figure in the hallway, one hand against the wall, the other against her heart. He nodded to Shaun. “You can tell her whenever you’re ready, kid,” he said, clinking his mug against Shaun’s. He could see Nora retreating on her silent tiptoes. “You know she loves you no matter what, right? Like she loves me.”

“I know,” Shaun said quickly, but a big smile broke over his face, one that he couldn’t hide no matter how he tried.

“Now should I fry up some bread with this too?” Nick asked, turning back to the frying pan.

“What are my two boys up to?” Nora called from the hallway, striding in the sitting room with loud step and exuberant voice.

“Just talking,” Shaun said, hugging her.  “Do you want breakfast, Mom?”

“Yes, I’m starving,” she avowed, kissing the top of her son’s head. “Just like you two must be I guess.”

Nick ladled out the eggs onto chipped plates and turned to serve them. “Just like,” he agreed, and when Nora made a show of not looking he winked at Shaun. “Eat up. I think we’ll all be on wall repairing duty today.”

He handed her his mug of chicory, her hands brushing over his, and they felt warm.


End file.
